Jun 9, 2014

Arouse (Spiral of Bliss, #1) by Nina Lane

"One day I'm going to touch you in a thousand different ways and show you how to touch me," he said. And he did.

Struggling
with a tormented past, undergraduate Olivia Winter once led a practical
but isolated life. Then she met Professor Dean West, a brilliant
scholar of medieval history who melted Liv's inhibitions and taught her
the meaning of both love and erotic pleasure. But after three years of a
blissful, lusty marriage, Liv and Dean now face a crisis that threatens
everything they believe about each other. And when dark secrets and
temptations rise to the surface, the fallout might break them apart
forever.

I've
been waiting for some time for a book for which I could say that. And
now I can, because I did just read the most wonderful story. Or, at
least, the first part of it.

“Liv,” he said, his voice rough with tenderness, “you don’t have to be afraid.”“Why not?”“Because I’ll slay monsters for you.”

There is something special about Liv and Dean's story
that captivated me right from the beginning. That story started about
five years ago when they met and fell in love. And now they are a
happily married couple. Or are they?A while back I read a quote
saying that an audience would watch a movie in suspense for two whole
hours so they could see the two main protagonists get married, when in
real life that is when the drama just starts. After three years
of marital bliss, the time came for Liv's and Dean's drama to begin. You
might call it a rough patch, but it was a rough patch that could have
ended them.

I love him to my bones, but suddenly I’m wondering what I might have been without him.

Liv has never wanted any other man in her life. From
the moment she met Dean, he was her everything - the hero who would
always save her. After a lousy childhood with a poor excuse for a
mother, he was the only one who she could completely trust... With
anything and everything. And then, after disagreement about their family and the reveal of Dean's secrets, that's when the doubts came. And fights...The distance between them...

We had it good. We both used the past tense without realizing it.

And no matter how much they tried to fix things between them, they seemed to only make it worse.

Maybe this was meant to happen, this discovery of cracks where now a different, new light can shine through.

What I loved most about this book is that these
wonderful, complicated characters seemed so real. And the writing style
was addictive. When books start with a couple that leads a great life, I
usually get very anxious because I know things can only get worse from
there, and that always keeps me glued to them. And it had a hot professor as a main character, soooo... You know?I can't wait to read the sequels. I need to know that the professor and beauty will be okay.

“I want to come home,” I say. “And I want you to be here when I do.”“I’ll be here, beauty. Waiting for you.”